Named after the guy who directed loads of pretty wild hip-hop and R&B videos in the late 90s/early 00s, Hype Williams are a somewhat mysterious duo of “illegal immigrants” based in Berlin. D. Blunt and Inga Copeland are resonsible for a series of very limited (and already sold out) vinyl releases on Carnivals and Second Layer which fuse somnambulist synths, clipped, spectral beats and disembodied, syrupy vocals. Utterly willing to dive into the slickest of 80s R&B, HW scramble back out of the shimmer, adding their own layers of fuzz and haze with a nice line in lo-fi dub bass to round things off. Perhaps understandably lumped in with a lot of the US hypnagogic pop scene, such as Pocahaunted and Sun Araw, Hype Williams’ more sexualised, European approach to 25 year old sounds has seen them lauded by everyone from 1Xtra’s Benji B to The Wire’s Joseph Stannard.www.myspace.com/hypheewilliams
HONG KONG IN THE 60S

Occidental/Oriental, multilingual, all- Casio three-piece from London and Cambridge who recently collaborated with The Advisory Circle. Influenced by early electronic pop, 1960s Chinese music and Italian film soundtracks HKIT60s combine bittersweet pop melodies and atmospheric electronics to create subtly lovely nuggets of sub-zero musical wonder.